Image Source: Netflix, Bombay Begums (2021), promotional still featuring Pooja Bhatt as Rani Irani. https://www.netflix.com/title/81076747

Earlier this week, it was my turn to present during supervision.

I could feel the fear before it even began—a tightness in my chest, my whole body warm with panic. When I started to speak, my voice felt smaller than I wanted it to. And underneath the words, a steady, resilient thought: I'm going to mess this up. I'm not presenting this right. They're going to figure out I'm not meant to be a therapist.

Because of those thoughts, I couldn't present the way I'd wanted to.

Even when it's not my turn to present, I rarely speak up. Not because I don't have thoughts—I do. My mind is full of questions and reflections. But somewhere between having a thought and saying it out loud, fear steps in.

It's not important enough. Someone else will say it better. What if it's wrong?

So I stay quiet.

As others speak, my focus turns inward. I start comparing. They sound smarter. They know more. They belong here. The fear becomes numbing—and even when I know I should say something, my body freezes. Meanwhile, I've stopped fully listening. And when I notice that, guilt follows: for being so caught up in my own head, for not being present.

When I've talked to colleagues about this, they reassure me—that everyone is learning, that mistakes are expected. I hear them. Believing them is harder.

Turns Out There’s a Name for It

Imposter syndrome. Knowing the term doesn't make the tightness in my chest go away. It's a feeling I recognise in the therapy room too—people carrying a deep sense of inadequacy, questioning their worth, measuring themselves constantly against others. Even when they're doing well by any objective measure, their success doesn't feel real or solid.

And it doesn't only show up when you're new. Freshers often feel it intensely, but so do people with years of training and experience behind them. If anything, it sometimes gets louder alongside achievement. A line I came across while reading about it captured this perfectly: the experience of doing well at something does nothing to change your beliefs. The thought still nags—what gives me the right to be here? Success exists on the outside, but the self-doubt inside stays exactly where it was.

That gap—doing well and still feeling inadequate—is what makes it so exhausting to carry.

What Imposter Syndrome Does Over Time

It shapes how we show up, silently and gradually. It makes us hesitate to take risks, hold back from opportunities we're actually qualified for, and keep our ideas to ourselves.

I see this in myself. When I've been offered opportunities that would have stretched me—spaces that could have expanded my skills—I turned them down. I told myself I didn't have enough experience yet, that I wasn't ready. In the moment, it felt safer to step back. But afterwards, it left me feeling stuck. Like I wasn't growing the way I should be.

For some people, it works the other way: imposter syndrome pushes them to overwork, to set impossibly high standards, chasing a feeling of competence that never quite arrives. On the outside, that can look like a drive. On the inside, it tends to feel like exhaustion.

What I Tell Myself

I don't have a formula for this. But there are moments when I talk myself through it: I know this is scary, but unless I try, I'll never know whether I'll fail—or whether I actually have the capacity to carry it through.

That reminder helps, sometimes. It doesn't erase the fear, but it softens it enough to act.

There are still spaces—like supervision—where the fear feels heavier, where my body freezes before my mind can catch up. I'm learning to let that be part of the process, rather than another reason to judge myself.

Showing Up Anyway

When I think back to that supervision earlier this week, I don't see it as a failure.

I see myself sitting in that room, carrying fear, noticing it, and still showing up. There were moments I spoke and moments I stayed quiet. There was awareness of what was happening inside me, even when I couldn't do much about it in real time.

Supervision, for me, isn't only about developing clinical skills. It's also where this fear becomes visible. Where imposter syndrome shows up most clearly. And where I keep returning—because that's part of how I grow.

I show up. I speak when I can. I notice when I freeze. And I come back the next time.

That counts.